The present invention relates to analytical instruments. In particular, the present invention relates to a rinsing device coupleable to an analytical instrument for rinsing sample processing components of the analytical instrument.
Analytical instruments are known which analyze various attributes of samples including liquid samples, such as drinking water or waste water samples and solid samples such as soil samples or gas samples. For example, such instruments may measure carbon content in water samples or volatile organic compounds (VOC) in soil samples.
Analytical instruments include autosamplers for systematically extracting samples for analysis, as well as purge and trap concentrators which are used with a liquid sample to prepare a gaseous sample for analysis by another analytical instrument such as a gas chromatograph. Such instruments may be connected for continuous operation for extracting, processing and analyzing samples.
During operation of an analytical instrument, sample may flow through sample processing components to extract a sample and process the sample for analysis. It is important to maintain a virgin sample for accurate measurement and analysis results. However, residue from prior samples can be deposited on the sample processing components and can be introduced in a subsequent sample thus contaminating the analysis of the subsequent sample. Thus it is desirable to remove residue from the sampling processing components prior to a subsequent testing cycle.